Privacy policy
Car Assist and OBD Cloud Assistant · last updated 3 November 2026
Car Assist is an iPhone app that reads your car through an OBD adapter and helps you work out what's wrong with it. Its assistant runs in OBD Cloud Assistant, our online service. This policy says what we collect, why, who else handles it, and what you can do about it. Car Assist is run by Jonathan Merriweather, in Australia, and is covered by the Australian Privacy Principles.
On your iPhone
The app reads your car's live values, fault codes, freeze frames, readiness monitors and modules through your adapter. While you have a session open with the assistant, the readings go to OBD Cloud Assistant and are kept with the session; otherwise they stay on your phone.
Location is off unless you turn it on. With Record location with readings, the app adds where your phone is, about once a second while a car is connected, to the readings it sends, so you can see the drive on a map coloured by a reading. With Keep reading with the phone locked, on a Wi-Fi adapter, the app uses your location only to keep running; it doesn't record or send it for that.
With OBD Cloud Assistant
When you use OBD Cloud Assistant, we collect:
- Your account. You sign in with Apple. We receive an identifier Apple makes for this app, not your name or email address, and we ask Apple for neither. We also keep a token from Apple that lets us end your Apple sign-in when you delete your account.
- The workshops you connect your account to, and a name you give one: shown only to that workshop, removed when you disconnect or stop sharing. A workshop you connect to learns your name and that you connected, nothing else, until you switch one of your cars on for it. If you leave “Also share cars I add later” on, a car you connect for the first time is shared with it too; switch it off and it stays off.
- Your phones. Each phone's device key (made by the app) and its name, such as "Jo's iPhone".
- Your car's data. Its VIN and what it reports about itself, the readings the app sends while a session is open, the codes and freeze frames the assistant asks for, and the car profiles you set up.
- Your drives, if you choose. With Record location on, where your phone was while a car was connected (position, speed, altitude and accuracy), kept with the session's readings so the app can map the drive. A workshop you share a car's location with sees its drives on a map too, named for where they started and ended.
- Your sessions. What you type and choose, the assistant's replies and findings, and notes from earlier sessions on the same car, which the assistant uses as background next time.
- Your diagnoses. Your purchases of diagnoses (the App Store's transaction identifiers, what each added, currency and storefront), the free first diagnosis, the demo car's diagnoses you've run, which sessions used one, and what each session's use of the assistant cost us.
- Adapter reports, if you send one. When an adapter doesn't work and you tap Report this adapter, the app shows you the report and sends it only if you tap Send: the adapter's Bluetooth name, services and identification strings, what the app did and everything the adapter said, any words you add, your iPhone's model and iOS version, the app's version, and your phone's device key. It never has your car's VIN (the app leaves that reply out), your location or your name. We use it only to make more adapters work. You can send one signed in or not.
- Technical records. Our servers keep short-lived logs (connections, errors, the account each relates to) for up to 30 days to keep the service running and secure.
- A workshop's book, if you run Car Assist Workshop. The PCs you join to your account (each one's key and name), your own names for cars (a plate) and notes on them, and the customer records you keep there: a name, phone number, email address and notes, and which car is whose. These are your records about your customers; we hold them for you under your account and show them to no one else, not to a car's owner and not to the assistant. If an owner shares a car with your workshop, what you see of it is what they chose to share, and they can stop at any time.
We don't collect your location unless you turn on Record location, and we don't collect your contacts or anything about you beyond the above. We don't sell your information or use it for advertising.
Who else handles it
- Anthropic (United States) runs the AI model behind OBD Cloud Assistant. During a diagnosis we send it your car's data and your messages, as above, so it can write the assistant's replies. We never send it your location. You agree to this in the app before your first cloud diagnosis. Anthropic handles it under its commercial terms.
- Vultr hosts our servers, in Melbourne, Australia, where your account and sessions are stored.
- Cloudflare provides our domain's DNS, carries the App Store's purchase notifications to our servers, and stores encrypted backup copies of our database in its Oceania region.
- Apple handles sign-in and payments. We never see your payment details.
- OpenStreetMap (the OpenStreetMap Foundation, United Kingdom) provides the maps and place names in Car Assist Workshop. Only for a drive whose location the owner shares with a workshop (or a workshop's own car), the workshop's PC fetches map images of the area it shows, and asks OpenStreetMap's place-name service for the suburb or town where the drive started and where it ended, each point rounded to about 100 metres first. These requests come from the workshop's PC, not from us, and carry no name, account, VIN or reading. OpenStreetMap sees that PC's internet address with them. The PC keeps the map images for two weeks and the place names it was given until its cache is cleared, and forgets where each drive started and ended once the owner stops sharing location with that workshop. The Car Assist app on your iPhone doesn't use OpenStreetMap.
Sending your car's data and messages to Anthropic means they're processed in the United States. We do this only for diagnoses you start.
How long we keep it
Your sessions, with their readings and any drive, and your notes and car profiles stay in your account until you delete them. You can delete a single session in the app, or your whole account (Assistant › Delete Account). Deleting your account removes it, your phones and PCs, sessions, readings, drives, notes, car profiles, a workshop's book and balance records, and ends your Apple sign-in for the app. We keep one thing after that: a one-way fingerprint of your Apple identifier, with how much free credit it has had and how many demo car diagnoses it has used, so the sign-up credit, the demo car's free diagnoses and what App Store test purchases add aren't given to the same Apple account again. Our backup copies are kept for up to a week, so what you delete is gone from them within 7 days. Server logs are gone within 30 days. An adapter report you sent signed in goes with your account; one sent signed out is kept until you ask us to delete it, giving the reference the app showed. Anthropic's retention of what it was sent is set out in its terms.
Your choices and rights
- You can see your sessions in the app, delete any of them, or delete your account.
- You can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, or to correct it.
- If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, tell us first. You can also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).
Children
Car Assist isn't meant for children under 16, and we don't knowingly collect their information.
Changes
If we change what's sent to the AI provider, or who the provider is, the app asks for your agreement again before your next cloud diagnosis. Other changes to this policy are posted here with a new date.